252 THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND 



built up to a degree commensurate with the responsibility they had 

 to face. 



THE BEGINNING OF THE DEFINITE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND WAS THE 

 DEFINITE EXPANSION OF AMEUICA 



It was not until 1606, the Roanoke colonies having been failures, 

 that the definite expansion of England, which was the definite expan- 

 sion of America, began in the first Virginia charter. It is an interest- 

 ing thing, however, going back through the century before, when, one 

 after another, five or six nations, in one way or another, were strug- 

 gling for this New World — Portugal and Spain having it all divided 

 between them at one time — to find that there breaks, little noticed, 

 into the midst of the commotion of all these powers one little English 

 squadron. In 1497, on the coast of Newfoundland, Ave find John 

 Cabot, sailing out under English auspices and under English orders. 

 As one of our historians has well said, the appearance, in the midst 

 of all the noise and ambition, of the little English fleet, just for a mo- 

 ment, was like one of the musical motifs suddenly a{)pearing in the 

 midst of one of the dramas of Wagner. By and by with its reappear- 

 ance we see that its first appearance was a prophecy of what was to 

 come, and by and by again it grows and becomes the dominant note, 

 controlling all the rest. So it is that the appearance for a moment, in 

 the midst of the squadrons of Spain and Portugal, of that little English 

 fleet was a new motif. It was a prophecy of the time when that English 

 motif should be dominant and England should be the controlling 

 power upon this continent. 



The great men of England, the rulers of England, thought little of 

 the events from which have sprung such great results. In our own 

 time our American poet has written, in his essay upon " Xeio England 

 Two Centuries Ago,^' of the little compan}'' who came out of England 

 and landed at Plymouth, that they were destined to influence, beyond 

 any others, the future of the world. That in truth was to be the 

 work of the Puritan. Not a man of high place at the beginning of 

 that seventeenth century realized the significance of that coming. It 

 Avas an event destined to shape human history, to alter the whole 

 course of aff'airs in the world ; yet I suppose few things at that time 

 happening in England attracted less attention. 



On the last day of the sixteenth century, December 31, 1600, some- 

 thing else happened, of a very diff'erent kind. On that day Elizabeth 

 set her name to the charter of the East India Company. Those who 



